Microsoft CEO Is Betting On A New Product You've Probably Never Heard Of: Delve

Microsoft is about to release a new kind of search tool that it's
been working on for years: Delve.

Delve is central to CEO Satya Nadella's
new vision to turn Microsoft into a "productivity and platform company."

That means less focus on
devices, more focus on what people do with the
devices.

He describes a world where your
phone/tablet/PC/TV knows you, understands you, and caters to your
needs even before you issue a command. (We're reminded of that
scene in the movie "Her" where Samantha, the smart operating
system, organizes Theodore's email and later submits a collection
of his work to a book publisher, unbeknownst to
him.)

Nadella named a number of
Microsoft technologies that will bring this vision to life.
Here's what he said in his memo:

As a result, people will meet
and collaborate more easily and effectively. They will express
ideas in new ways. They will experience the magic of ambient
intelligence with Delve and
Cortana. They will ask questions naturally and
have them answered with insight from Power
Q&A. They will conquer language barriers and
change the world with Skype translator.

Cortanais Microsoft's answer to Siri and is
part of the latest version of Windows Phone.

Power Q&A
is an
add-on cloud service for Office 365 customers, the
version of Microsoft Office that runs in the cloud. It's a data
analysis tool. You type in a question and it searches through
corporate documents stored in SharePoint and Excel and gives you
an answer, maybe complete with chart. (This kind of natural
language analysis is the next-generation tech for "business
intelligence" software, the kind of software used to predict
things like quarterly sales, etc.)

But
Delve could be one of the most interesting of
all. Delve, previously code-named Oslo, is Microsoft's version of
Google search. The company has been working on it for years. It
doesn't search the Web, it searches your emails, social networks,
and corporate documents stored in Office 365.

Delve uses "machine learning" and artificial intelligence to show
you the documents, messages, and people you don't know you
need to see. Microsoft
describes it as:

Delve highlights key information of interest to you, based on
what you are working on and the actions of people in your
network.